The present invention relates to systems for delivering reference information to a plurality of users.
Passive, or reference information, is stored principally in ways which require the user to access a desired field of information in an individual and unique way. On-line services provide data to the user by responding to his specific request and accessing and serving the data uniquely to him. CD-ROM and other mass data storage techniques are designed to provide one bit of data to any one user at any given time. These delivery approaches provide rapid and random access but are not conducive to providing a large group of users with economical access to information. Requiring the user to have a computer, a modem, and in the case of CD-ROM an expensive peripheral device and subsequently expensive software on the disk, these systems are economically impractical for mass distribution. The nature of these systems is to provide a single user with data and information in a way which provides the user random selection. Systems exist to "network" together multiple users but no system currently exists to deliver mass information economically and simultaneously to a large group of users, while still providing each user individual random selection.
Information can be distributed from a source to a plurality of users in some systems, such as local area networks, by arbitrating between users according to varied schemes to provide one user access at any given time. In the video and audio technologies, video and audio signals are provided to a plurality of users over TV channels or radio channels, but individual users have no control over the selections they are provided other than choosing between the different channels.